My rant on the incompetency of the US news media.

Like the news media, I too am absorbed by the Democratic primary elections…even though I would appreciate the media spending more time on international news rather than re-hashing the same election stories over and over and over again as well as letting every political pundit speak ad infinitum on his or her views. Enough already!

Just give me the news, let me hear what the candidates have to say and let me make up my own mind. I don’t need a pundit to tell me what to think! I am quite capable of doing that thinking for myself, thank you.

Instead of spending hours upon hours discussing every nuance of the campaign to the point of boredom, tell me what is happening in the rest of the world. For example, how much media attention has been focused on the fact the people in Haiti are eating mud cakes. That’s right, mud mixed with grass because the people cannot afford food. The UN Food Program estimates that over 10 billion people around the world, in numerous countries, are on the verge of starvation because of the high cost of food.

And what’s going on in Russia? During the recent elections, thousands of Russian children and teenagers went to political summer camps where they were indoctrinated with Putin’s party ideology. When I saw the video on a European news program, shivers of fear ran down my spine. It reminded me too much of what happened during the early days of the Nazi party when indoctrinating the youth of Germany by enlisting them into youth corps and sending them to summer camps where they would inundated with party philosophy was a prime tactic for the Nazi party. Is the same thing going on in Russia under Putin? We all know Putin wants to regain the USSR’s former glory and preeminence on the world stage. And that his party, if not he himself, is silencing all dissenting voices. So, what is next on his mind? Will he use Russia’s vast oil and gas reserves to bring Europe to its collective knees?

And how about Pakistan? Since the election a few months ago when Musharraf lost to the late Benazir Bhutto’s party, what has been happening in Pakistan? Who knows, ’cause the US media has been silent on its coverage of that critical state. This is the country that harbors Taliban fighters and Al Qaida in its western tribal regions including Peshawar and Waziristan. It is also a country with nuclear weapons. Has the new government been able to reinstate their constitution and return its judges and Supreme Court to their offices? How is the new government dealing with the rebels in the tribal regions? The US news media remains silent.

Unless there’s a major disaster such as what has just occurred in Myanmar (Burma) or in China, we hear of nothing that is happening in the rest of the world. Frankly, I protest the myopia of the US news media. The world is so small now and so interdependent that not to cover what is going on in the rest of the world fails to serve the American people. Must the American public remain ignorant of what people around this globe are thinking and the ways in which they are acting because the media is so focused on only what is occurring in the US, in particular on the most minute and inane details and political pundit speculations of the current Democratic primaries?